Today is Ada Lovelace Day when we highlight the accomplishments of women in tech and write about particular women we admire.
Yeah I can’t do that.
No, I don’t mean that I don’t admire women in tech, it’s that I admire too many women to list here. I think I could write almost a post a day and not exhaust my list of women I know.
I had the line in mind that women are crucial to tech, but I think that’s just simplistic. Almost patronizing. It suggests that women who work in tech are somehow different than men who work in tech, when in reality we’re all different in how we approach tech problems.
I don’t find it surprising that Ada Lovelace was the first person to program a computer. I think women have a keen sense of thinking about problems differently. Does it surprise me that women were discouraged from careers in tech for so long? Not at all; men don’t have a great track record for letting “outsiders” into their professions.
What is important to remember about Ada Lovelace Day is that with diversity of perspectives, talents, backgrounds, and skills we can create the new things that will power our tech-infused world.
Ada Lovelace asked, and answered, the “what if…” question. I think we need to all challenge ourselves to ask “what if…” more often. Consider what if we did something differently or looked at a problem in a new way, that maybe a new solution might present itself to us.
That’s what today is about more than anything…challenging what is accepted to build something that has never been built before.
